Month: August 2015

Understanding content marketing can be complex sometimes. It is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling them. But according to Sonia Simone : Content by itself- even terrific content- is just content. It is imperative to understand business and marketing goals to make your content effective.

Content Marketing would be a meaningless exercise without setting business goals. Here are some effective business goals to look out before starting a content marketing strategy.

1 Brand Awareness

It is important to build a strong brand presence in the market place and content marketing is a great vehicle for that as it is organic, authentic and a great way to start engagement with your brand. Fast-casual chain Chipotle Mexican Grill added some spice to its long-running “Food With Integrity” sustainable farming campaign by teaming with Academy Award-winning design firm Moonbot Studios for The Scarecrow, an animated short film and accompanying mobile game created to increase consumer awareness of animal confinement, synthetic growth hormones, toxic pesticides and other fixtures of industrial food production

The content should be compelling so that it can attract links, social media sharing and conversation

2 Find out your prospects pain points

It is important to understand the problems of your buyer personas and how to solve them. Smart content marketing always create space for queries for the target audience to increase the engagement with your brand. National Health Service UK does this by having comprehensive bank of content for almost any ailment on their website.

3 Make your offering appear perfect for your prospects

One of the best strategy to do this is story telling. It is a powerful tool as it shows what it is like to own your product. Hampton Creek has done this very nicely. They started out with their first product, Just Mayo, with no eggs. Company wants to create a world that is kinder to animals and environment.

4 Lead nurturing

One of the important part of inbound marketing is conversion metrics. According to Joe Pulizzi, a lead is someone who is encouraged to the stage that he is ready to give enough information about themselves, that now you have acquiescence to market them. This can be registering for a trial or a newsletter subscription. Use your content accordingly to help your prospects move further in their buying stage.

5 Delight your customers

Building strong relationship with the existing customer can be the the most important pillar in achieving your business goal. Delight your customers in such a way that they become brand evangelists. Michele Linn explains how Tourism Australia aims to make their audience the hero

These are some goals to start with, you can figure out your own goals and map a content strategy to meet those goals. There is some more information by Sarah Goliger on how to measure your content marketing goals. If you have any other information to share please feel free to comment below.

Are you using content marketing as your strategy? Do you think you are lacking somewhere? Providing valuable content for your audience can help you stand out on social platforms. Here are some tips to raise your social media performance with astounding content

1. Create Brand awareness by targeting readers not just buyers.

According to Sarah Quinn it is important to do research on reader persona. A reader persona is a person who would not buy anything from you but would like to read and share your content. It is equally important to target your reader persona as they extend your reach and good source of word of mouth marketing. For example, a person who is interested in organic foods and grows his own food for that purpose, an organic food company can create a content that can help him with his home farming.

2. Always use positive content

Most likely people will share your content if it is positive, interesting and also educational for them. For instance, Ecostore shared this to promote its baby products

Tips for bathing your baby

3. Use data to influence target audience

Sometimes adding data can influence your target audience. Adding relevant data is a great way to increase value you deliver.

This type of information can be valuable for a health conscious consumer.

4. Research on what your audience desires

Create your content keeping in mind what type of audience you are targeting. Some would like flashy and fun stuff, others would like to see simple but elegant content. Ecostore always uses simple but effective content approach. Their social posts are loaded with healthy tips and solutions.

5. Support a charity

According to Vinay Koshy , if you are supporting a non profit organisation highlight that in your content at social media. This generates likes and shares for your posts. If any of your employees or company leaders are speaking at a charity event, record the remarks and upload to the company’s facebook page. In this facebook post health basics shared the status of Bird rescue charitable trust showing their contribution towards it.

We are blown away by all the community support lately. Big Bird Rescue thank you to Health Basics - for once again donating hand wash to our charity .

6. Engage with your Audience

Lastly but most importantly engage with your fans. The best way is to ask questions, reply to their comments. Vogel’s are very good in engaging with their audiences, the facebook post below shows how well they engage with their customers.

The Vogel’s | Frizzell loaves are almost gone. Hurry down and grab yours before they’re toast.

So what do you think about the content? Do you have any other ideas to influence your target market? I would love to hear them, please leave a comment if you want to share some more tips for social media content. Here are some more links to read regarding content marketing using social platforms

This famous saying “Honesty is the best policy” is still extremely powerful in the 21st century. Honesty is a key factor for a business which deals with health and wellness and especially for its marketing.It is important for marketers to understand the importance of being transparent. This article by Doug Kessler explains some captivating rationales for accepting the shortcomings of a business

I strongly believe in being honest when marketing your business because as a customer i would like to be treated fairly
and has the right to know about the shortcomings of a product or a service.

Here are some ideas of re-modelling your marketing strategy using honesty

1. Don’t afraid to accept your shortcomings

Not every product or service is perfect for everyone. Not even Apple. That is why it is important for marketers to admit
their imperfections. As Don Peppers quoted this as

“if you want to succeed , you will need your customers to see you as reliable, dependable, credible, helpful, respectful,
open, responsive and honest”

Johnson and Johnson accepted their shortcomings and took the initiative by removing some unwanted and harsh chemicals from their baby products. This astounding video by J&J is an excellent example of refining your products or services according to customer needs.

2. Appreciate your competitors

I know it is hard to praise your competitions but we as marketers cannot even ignore them after all we are on the same boat serving similar customers in the similar industry.

When a customer chooses your brand, he wants to feel safe. If you are not the right brand for the job, don’t hesitate to refer them to your competition. You might lose that one particular sale but you have succeeded in gaining a new brand evangelist. Brand evangelists are worth risking a sale.

3. Accept your mistakes

Accepting mistakes don’t make you weak, but it makes you awesome. Even big brands like Dominos pizza didn’t hesitate to accept their mistakes.

Domino’s pizza took customers comments like “Dominos pizza crust is like cardboard” seriously and decided to start over. The company accepted their mistake through ads, made improvements and the results were rewarding. Customers described them as “bold and refreshing”

In conclusion, it may feel scary or anti-marketing but is the best practice for successful marketing.

Don’t forget to read the following links for more interesting facts about sincerity in marketing and some excellent examples